Next Generation Communications - Mobile Marketing Archives

The Operational Imperative in the New Era of Mobile Data Personalization

2013-02-24T18:49:36Z

Pat McCabe, Marketing Director - Policy Solutions, Alcatel-Lucent

The growth of mobile data is driving significant revenue at various Internet and Over-the-The Top (OTT) companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook not to mention with various VOIP, video and content providers. The mobile service provider, who provides mobile Internet user’s connectivity to these companies, has yet to capitalize on this growth. To make this situation even more challenging the service provider’s voice and SMS revenues, historically representing over 70% of their total revenue, are flattening and are being slowly replaced with OTT versions of these services as found by mobiThinking.

However, there is a clear market demand to empower mobile users with a simplification of the mobile broadband experience while offering data usage transparency. There is also a demand to provide data services that are specifically tailored to the individual and their particular lifestyles and usage patterns. This is where the opportunity lies for the service provider. They need to “transform” their business to take advantage of this new ”mobile data frontier” by meeting consumer driven requirements while creating new and innovative streams of revenue.

The service provider will need to re-invent the way they do business and flip their existing model. This will include renovating their existing policy and charging infrastructure to allow the service provider to interact with the subscriber, while offering services that consider real-time contextual information (e.g. location, time of day, subscriber preferences and loyalty, customer and network analytics), to add personal meaning and value to their data experience.

Technically service providers can achieve this but the challenge is to do so in an operationally viable manner. Ultimately they will need to deploy a next generation integrated policy and charging solution that will help to streamline their operational model across the entire lifecycle of data service delivery including conception, deployment, service creation, service modification and evolution, and network growth and evolution.

Conception - remove functional and operational barriers

Service providers should evolve their thinking when planning the next generation of personalized “revenue-generating” data services. Some of these services could include capitalizing on trends such as the latest mobile gaming phenomenon, a new mobile video conferencing application, a new social media site, the list goes on. By offering mobile data services to a specific demographic of interest based on a specific context to take advantage of these trends is key. To do this, service providers need to deploy a solution that is flexible and broad enough to break down the functional and operation barriers so the “go to market” plan will overcome technical obstacles that could stifle the ability to meet their business goals.

Source: Alcatel-Lucent

Deployment - smoothly interoperate into existing environments

Service providers need a pre-integrated solution that is also adaptable to any multi-vendor environment. Every environment is different and will have multiple systems (e.g. PCRF, OCS, SPR, etc) that need to be leveraged to maximize their value and sunk cost. As such, the solution needs to include “pluggable” capabilities that will mediate from a host of third party elements. This gives service providers the fastest path from conception to deployment while reducing integration costs along the way.

Service Creation - quickly and easily create new services

The new generation of personalized data services needs to be created and offered quickly and easily without long lead times. The solution must enable the service provider to create these services themselves in-house (marketing/product staff) without the need for costly third party consultation from the original vendor. This puts the service provider in complete control of their business goals.

Service Modification and Enhancement - modify and enhance your services with ease

The world of mobile data is ever-changing and ever-evolving and service providers will need to evolve their data service offerings at the same speed. Service providers require an environment where existing services can be modified quickly and easily – often in minutes without new software, and without any third party dependency or intense scripting requirements. This level of service velocity puts the service provider in a position to capture new opportunities before the competition and without a heavy operational burden.

Network Growth and Evolution - update, upgrade, and add new network elements with operational efficiency

The solution will also have to allow the service provider to grow and evolve their network with operational ease and efficiency. Upgrading/updating network elements within the solution ecosystem has to be done quickly and easily without impacting other elements. Having a solution that is adaptable and “pluggable” certainly helps to accomplish this. Plugability also allows service providers to add new elements as the ecosystem evolves.

Service providers should seek out solutions and vendors that offer the ability to transform their business but in an operationally efficient and sustainable manner with an easy path for network renovation and upgrades. Service opportunities in the new mobile broadband environment are fleeting and thus service providers need to be equipped with the tools to act on these opportunities with agility. At Alcatel-Lucent we strive to make mobile broadband more accessible, personal, meaningful and well … smarter. Service providers that take this approach and build this type of infrastructure can offer a new breed of personalized tools and services that will be positioned to compete with the OTT vendors by creating new streams of revenue while building lasting relationships with their subscribers.

Motive Mobile Device Manager Key to Better and More Cost-Effective Customer Experiences

2012-07-16T00:55:36Z

By Mae Kowalke

The customer service challenge for cellular providers is clear.

Numerous research firms have recently published studies estimating that smartphones currently make up half of all mobile phone purchases globally and that number is expected to reach 75 percent by 2013. This is context for what is a vexing industry challenge. It turns out that more than half of all customer service calls to mobile service operators now deal with the difficult technical problems that can come from smartphones, such as mobile internet, and 63 percent of returned phones are not actually faulty.

In fact, a recent Yankee Group study notes that technical difficulties now represent a bigger percentage of call center volume than billing issues. They also represent a huge financial drain on operators. A single support call, for example, can cost a provider roughly a month’s worth of customer profit. This means finding ways to effectively address device configuration and service provisioning is more crucial than ever.

Alcatel-Lucent has just released the latest version of its new Mobile Device Manager (MDM) to address this type of challenge, as part of its Motive Customer Experience Solutions package. MDM provides over-the-air detection, configuration and provisioning of a wide range of mobile devices including Apple and Android operating systems, and it works across 2G, 3G and 4G wireless networks.

David Stevenson, VP and General Manager of Motive Customer Experience Solutions at Alcatel-Lucent noted at the recent MDM introduction that, “With Alcatel-Lucent’s portfolio of Motive customer experience solutions – of which the Mobile Device Manager is a fundamental building block – we can reduce average handle times of service desk calls with at least 10 percent and increase successful software updates with a factor of 10.” He added: “This translates into less operational costs for mobile service providers, and happier and more loyal consumers.”

In addition to MDM, six other components make up the overall Motive Mobile Device Manager solution:

Motive Mobile Device Support Template

WDS Automatic Device Detection Manager
WDS Mobile Device Content Subscription
Motive Self-Service Console
Motive Service Management Platform, and Motive Customer Service Console

The Motive Mobile Device Support Template performs over-the-air diagnosis and resolution of mobile device service issues by using data from MDM, while the WDS Automatic Device Detection Manager lets mobile service providers detect and identify mobile devices when they appear on the network.

The Motive Customer Service Console is a robust customer care interface for customer service reps, and Motive Self-Service Console is a web-based subscriber-facing tool that lets customers self-diagnose and resolve mobile device issues. This is tied together with the Motive Service Management Platform, which is a service management platform that connects MDM, the self-service console and the customer-service console with the operator’s OSS/BSS framework.

Alcatel-Lucent also offers the WDS Mobile Device Content Subscription, which is a subscription service that “ensures access to up-to-date device configuration settings that have been tested against the Motive MDM server to effectively activate and manage the mobile devices on their network, accurately.

Time is money, particularly in the case of the efficient and effective management of customer interactions by mobile service provider contact center and technical support people. Ensuring that customer conversations are compelling as well as economical requires a combination of things including proper training, skills-based routing and ensuring that the right tools are used to measure those experiences so that data can be turned into knowledge and knowledge into actions that create value. Managing devices is a critical part of this equation which is why a comprehensive approach to device management such as the Motive portfolio is something that is already drawing industry attention.

The War Will be Won over Customer Experience

2012-07-02T19:14:49Z

By Mae Kowalke

The battle for the best mobile device portfolio steals the headlines with its flashy array of smartphone offerings. However, increasingly it appears that the war will be won by the mobile broadband operator who provides the best customer experience as enabled by overall quality of experience (QoE) on their network.

“To thrive in today’s competitive mobile broadband market, service providers must deliver superior QoE and enrich the customer experience,” noted Greg Owens, director of marketing for customer experience at Alcatel-Lucent, in a recent Enriching Communications article, “Customer Insights Improve Business Performance, stated that, “With growing pressure to reduce churn and increase revenues, service providers need to have a better understanding of how customers use their services.”

Churn and cost reduction are key drivers in the mobile broadband provider’s push for improved QoE. It costs U.S. service provider about $400 to acquire a mobile customer, and churn rates average between 30 and 50 percent, according to Owens. That means spending roughly $120-200 million each year to replace 300,000-500,000 customers for a provider with a million customers. With that kind of money on the table, one of the best ways to grow is clearly to find ways to reduce churn, and improving QoE is critical.

But what exactly is QoE? It can be difficult to define. The standard definition is network quality and performance, which do still count. That said, network quality is only part of the equation for mobile broadband providers seeking a more competitive QoE. It is not just about network metrics it is also about how customers actually experience the network.

That’s where increased analytics and services such as Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Analytics (CXA), part of the company’s larger suite of Motive Customer Experience Solutions for mobile broadband providers, come into play.

The CXA solution helps strengthen the QoE and customer experience by enabling providers to extract real-time QoE data from many different sources, including network elements, customer relationship management tools and operations support systems; correlate, analyze and transform customer experience data into relevant business intelligence; generate actionable reports and dashboards from the data; and realize the full value of churn through making the data available to other system applications.

“Analytics can be used to identify a faulty cell where a large number of high value customers are located,” Owens said. “The engineering or network operations group can then put priority on the resolution of that network fault because it has a large financial impact. They can even take an additional step to message those customers impacted by that issue.”

He added: “Proactive support helps customers enjoy a better QoE while reducing their propensity to churn.”

Owens recommended three strategies mobile broadband operators should employ when seeking better QoE and customer experience.

Adopt a holistic approach: Use big data from across the company to gain a more complete understanding of customers and how they interact with the services and the network.

Break down internal barriers: As a corollary to the first point, a cultural change needs to take place where service providers eliminate the lack an ability or willingness for internal groups to share customer experience data across networks and organizational domains. The silos need to come down.

Develop a clear vision: Success can only be achieved if there is buy-in and direction from the executive level. The good news is that more and more service providers recognize this need and are putting senior executives in charge of customer experience programs.

At the end of the day, in a world where services are becoming more and more of a commodity, it is clear that to those who provide compelling experiences —how customers interact with services as well as service people and business processes and practices —win. It is equally clear that those who do not choose to make improved customer experiences a top priority do so at their own peril.

The Mobile Customer Experience Imperative

2012-06-25T15:57:10Z

By: Susan Campbell

Mobile service providers throughout the world are in an interesting competitive situation. The service provided is becoming a commodity by consumers. This means that true differentiation in this market going forward will be driven by customer experience transformations, such as those enabled by Alcatel-Lucent’s portfolio of Motive Customer Experience Solutions, as traditional approaches prove to be increasingly ineffective.

Market realities today are that consumers tend to avoid brand loyalty when considering services delivered and even price points when there is little differentiation. As a result, mobile service providers by competitive necessity must pay particular attention to establishing exceptional customer experiences if they hope to achieve business success. The focus must be on building trust with customers over time and increasing customer perceptions of the value of the customer experience, rather than leveraging services and products.

Alcatel-Lucent s recently shared its view on this in a piece entitled, “Customer Experience Transformation: The Mobile Customer Experience Imperative.” It highlights these market changes and what service providers need to be thinking about in order to be correctly positioned for success.

The situation is clear: potential new mobile subscriber rates are declining, consumer willingness to pay is changing, price points tend to vary little among dominate players and few advantages exist among different networks, devices or applications in terms of operator abilities to provide meaningful and sustainable differentiation.

With these challenges established, service providers cannot rely on traditional marketing strategies and tactics. The reasons are clear, new and more advanced handsets and advances in network capabilities no longer offer true points of differentiation, and complex offers are too difficult to understand and manage to be effective. At the same time, unique market positions have failed to emerge from the applications and services provided by third party developers.

But what does improving the customer experience entail? For starters it means having a comprehensive and deep understanding of:

The different key customer segments
Each customer touch point location and interaction opportunity
Perceptions of these touch points and interactions
The metrics behind customer transactional behavior
The ability to discern the overall value of the customer experience in the context of buying decisions.

What this translates into is that service providers hoping to dominate the market will need to implement a strategy of continuous improvement that is built on actions that are designed to deliver the improved customer experience all the way through the customer experience transformation.

As mentioned above, such a strategy needs the types of tools in Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Solutions which enable service providers to use an extensive set of subscriber management data products. The goal of such solutions is to retrieve, integrate, consolidate, unify and provide access to key customer data.

In an era of big data, where business insights are gained from breaking down silos of information across operations so that multiple client applications can use the resulting data for actionable insights, the benefits are be substantial by providing:

Increased service personalization
Simplified customer interactions
Improved business relevance
Reduced development and integration costs for solutions and services

All of these leads to happier and more loyal customers, along with the reduction in costs resulting from business process automation, and ultimately increased profitability.

It might be possible given all of the financial constraints of today’s challenging competitive environment to focus time and attention on incremental approaches to improving what has worked in the past. However, reality is that the marketplace is dictating that it is imperative for service providers to use emerging solutions to get a handle on what will be the major way of increasing sustainable differentiated value in the future, and that is an intense attention to the transforming the way they deliver services and interact with customers.

With customer experience transformation now on service providers’ critical path to success, having the right and best information for using business intelligence to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions and exploit new opportunities to their fullest is key. This is not just about asking the right questions, it is about getting actionable information that enables companies to be both fast and best in the market.

Customer Experience in the Spotlight

2012-06-18T14:52:19Z

Greg Owens, Director, Customer Experience Solutions Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

Customers have growing expectations for mobile broadband services. Better networks, broader device support, ubiquitous connectivity and competitive prices remain essential, but they’re no longer enough to keep customers coming back for more. Today’s mobile customers demand a superior customer experience, one that focuses on making it easy to discover, use and enjoy applications, devices and services.

Service providers are feeling the pressure to deliver on these expectations.

A renewed focus on QoE

Rising smartphone use is thrusting quality of experience (QoE) back into the spotlight. Smartphones appeal to users because they promise easy access to e-mail, apps, social networking and video. But smartphones have hidden complexities. Many users struggle with smartphone setup, app configuration, usage tracking and connectivity.

The end result is that smartphone users are turning to service providers more often — with problems that take more time to resolve.

Research by Alcatel-Lucent and WDS highlights the challenges associated with smartphone support:

Average handle time is currently 15 minutes for smartphone issues — 28% more than for feature phone issues.
A full 30% of smartphone problems even take more than a day to resolve.
Follow-up calls are frequent as well: 43% of smartphone problems require two or more interactions with the help desk.

This isn’t what customers expect when they sign their smartphone contracts.

Avoiding aggravation at the help desk

Service provider help desks should be reliable sources of quick answers and effective solutions. Great help desk experiences can enhance QoE and strengthen customer–provider relations. But despite providers’ efforts, the help desk often remains a source of aggravation for many (smartphone) users.

The main problem is that help desk agents aren’t always equipped to deliver fast, reliable solutions. Many lack easy access to timely intelligence about devices, applications, services and networks. They hunt for solutions manually — often across dozens of systems — or escalate issues to higher-tier support. For customers, the end effects are long wait times, frequent transfers and repeat calls.

What customers expect from support

So what kind of support do (smartphone) customers expect from service providers? The answers are straightforward:

They want quick and effective solutions that let them enjoy their devices and services.
They want to feel confident that their providers understand their unique problems, interests and needs.
Above all, they want to feel like they’re always in control of the customer experience.
The best support keeps customers connected to — and in control of — their devices, services, applications and content. From a customer perspective an ideal support offer includes:
Personalized support that solves problems quickly and simplifies service and app configuration
Access to the same QoE through every support channel —phone, chat, self-care, on-device help apps and social networking
Proactive support that fixes problems before they become apparent

Knowledge helps service providers deliver

Service providers have in-depth knowledge of customers, devices, services and networks. This puts them in an ideal position to deliver the enhanced support and simple experiences customers want. The challenge is to make this knowledge available to the right stakeholders and systems at every point of customer interaction.

Systems that deliver the right tools, information and visibility to the right places at the right times can dramatically improve the customer experience. With support backed by data-driven insights, customers can:

Engage with agents who know what services, devices and apps they use, and who can identify problems, solutions and new opportunities in real time. This cuts handling time and gets customers back on track faster.

Get support on all services from one well-informed source. This reduces escalations and transfers, and saves customers the trouble of explaining their concerns to agents who can’t actually address them.

Access automated configuration capabilities or apps that instantly connect them with the help desk using their channel of choice. This can eliminate complex configuration issues and allow customers to get support at their convenience.

All of these things can inspire customer satisfaction. Customers can feel confident that they can solve problems on their own or get help from someone who understands what they’re experiencing. The end results are fewer and shorter help desk calls, less frustration and more time for enjoyment and discovery.

Beyond the help desk

The relevance of data doesn’t stop at the help desk. With effective data mining and analysis, service providers can use their knowledge of customers to enhance and optimize many aspects of the customer experience.

For example, providers can apply their knowledge of customer usage data to present customers with valuable incentives — like unlimited mobile video downloads in off-peak hours at no additional cost — delivering more value for money. They can draw on similar knowledge to empower the help desk to extend compelling targeted offers. Or, they can use it to confirm that customers are getting the best possible value from their mobile packages.

Service providers can combine customer, network and usage insights to take a more proactive and positive approach to bandwidth management. For instance, to offset unpopular bandwidth and usage caps, providers can give customers compelling real-time opportunities to try different consumption patterns. These could include dynamic data pricing or free streaming of content sponsored by content providers.

Data-driven insights can also influence customer experience in more subtle ways, such as preventing bill shock. With the right insights, service providers can watch for abnormally high usage or billing charges in special conditions such as international roaming. They can then trigger alerts to offer transparency and choices that prevent undesirable surprises.

Getting “motivated” about customer experience

Alcatel-Lucent’s recently launched portfolio of Motive Customer Experience Solutions (CSX) addresses the concerns outlined above. The CXS portfolio helps service providers forge stronger and more valuable customer relationships and foster long-lasting brand loyalty by building customer-focused improvements into their products and services.

Customer Experience Management Key to Mobile Services Differentiation

2012-06-03T22:41:46Z

By Susan Campbell

The mobile broadband services market has become almost hyper-competitive globally. And, it has become increasingly clear that providing superior quality of experience (QoE) to customers, end users as well as third parties, will likely be a (if not the most) critical element in creating sustainable and profitable differentiated value. As a result, mobile service provider investment attention needs to be focused not just on delivering speeds and feeds but also on all aspects of QoE. A holistic approach for concentration on customer care¸ such as the Alcatel-Lucent portfolio of Motive Customer Experience solutions, fits the needs for making sure the best possible user experiences can be provided, monitored and constantly improved.

Why customer care, and why a comprehensive approach?

The reason is that a holistic approach to customer care is a fundamental tool for reducing vital churn rates. The bottom line is the bottom line here. Service providers (SPs) have the opportunity to make better use of the subscriber and network data to help not only make customers more loyal but also improve average revenue per user (ARPU) based on establishing a relationship that customers view as more “trusted.” In fact, if done correctly, they can leverage the provisioning of compelling customer experiences into a powerful tool for making satisfied customers enthusiastic brand advocates.

All of the elements of a holistic approach to QoE and the benefits it is capable of providing are highlighted in a recent Alcatel-Lucent Enriching Communications article, Managing the Mobile Customer Experience.

Let’s face it. Customers today expect their mobile networks today to deliver a high-performance and secure always on/all ways connected experience to their legacy and new bit-hungry personal devices. Everywhere, every time access to rich multimedia services and advanced applications is table stakes.

This presents a huge challenge and opportunity of mobile service providers around the world. Did you know, for example, that smartphones now account for 27 percent of all phones throughout the world, according to VisionMobile. Projections are they will represent 75 percent in the near future and certainly the vast majority of new phone sales. Plus, the explosive tablet market is driving a revolution in interactive multimedia apps which all need to themselves provide end users quality experiences if they are to succeed. They in essence will live or die based on the ability of the networks they rely on to deliver what they promise.

Reality is that it is not enough to simply recognize the fact that traffic in general is exploding as more devices are attached to the global networks. The nature of that traffic is also radically changing. Multimedia apps, and the use of streamed and real-time interactive video, presents a rising storm of data that already is straining mobile networks capacity in many places as well as the signaling networks that enable them to manage the new complexity.

As the article points out this is the proof case for why SPs, especially in the face of strong competition, need to invest now in efficiently and effectively managing the customer experience with solutions like Motive in order to set themselves apart in a world that is changing very rapidly.

SPs offering mobility are currently struggling to find their place between over-the-top (OTT) providers and customers. As the industry grows and evolves, complexity is bring added to the mix with new operating systems, configurations and applications. As a result, complex technologies are being made available to inexperienced customers, increasing the challenge of delivering a satisfying experience at a reasonable cost.

Management of QoE means improving such things as: first call resolution, the provision of self-diagnostic and self-care solutions, the clarification of offered services and how they are billed, and the delivery of a consistent experience across every customer interaction.

In taking the holistic approach to the customer experience, can target their position in the value chain and reinforce it in the mind of the consumer. Leveraging a holistic approach to customer experience management helps in the process by extending QoE to every touch point throughout the entire customer experience.

At the end of the day, value creation and competitive sustainability are based on trust, and trust is engendered by improved relationships between buyers and sellers which can only be the result of how buyers experience and SPs people, products, services and processes. That is what a holistic approach to QoE management is all about. It is the path to growth and profits instead of to commoditization .

LTE Wireless Networks -- Time to Deploy

2012-05-07T18:20:17Z

By Mae Kowalke

Wireless operators and those who supply them infrastructure spend a lot of time focusing on the ‘data storm’ and what they are doing to stay one step ahead of it. The goal is to deliver more data, faster, with a better customer experience and greater economies of scale than in the past. Thanks to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, these goals are now within reach.

“According to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), 4G LTE is the fastest developing mobile system technology ever,” said Maniam Palanivelu, director of global 4G LTE solutions marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, in an Enriching Communications article, “LTE: The Best Thing to Happen to Wireless Networks.”

Palanivelu cited GSA figures indicating there are now 49 commercial LTE networks in 29 countries, and that is forecasted to reach 119 networks in 53 countries by the end of 2012. Two hundred and eight-five operators in 93 countries are actively investing in LTE. In fact, the evolution toward 4G LTE is occurring in developing and developed markets alike.

“Operators in developing markets are using LTE to cost effectively bring the mobile Internet to areas that previously had no Internet access at all…In developed markets, premium data services, such as mobile video, gaming and business apps, need LTE’s big bandwidth and low latency,” Palanivelu explained.

For operators, the need to deliver more data is the driving force behind LTE adoption. Customers got a taste for data with 3G, and changed their behavior in response. With average consumption per device growing 14-20 fold, it is clear users want more data. They also are indicating they want it sooner rather than later. The advertising push by service providers on who has the best and/or most extensive 4GLTE deployment demonstrates how critical expeditiously deploying not just 4G LTE but also Wi-Fi hotspots has become. Make no mistake about the fact that operators are committing infrastructure dollars behind their marketing claims.

The cellular carriers have it right about the imperatives for acting, Palanivelu says, “Now is the time for operators to seize this opportunity and profit from the growing data storm,” and LTE clearly is the technology they need to meet exploding demand.

The article makes other compelling points about LTE that highlight its attraction. Delivering more data isn’t the only advantage. LTE also provides a graceful migration path to move to a scalable all-IP architecture.

“It no longer makes business or financial sense to run multiple disparate networks,” Palanivelu states. He continues that, “To deliver the massive capacity required to serve the demand, today’s networks must change. Unlike 3G, LTE is all IP. It’s based on IPv6 which supports massive numbers of additional IP addresses and provides other improvements over IPv4. And it opens up access to new market segments like machine-to-machine.”

Although return on investment for LTE varies for each operator the path forward is clear. Deployment is now no longer a question of if, but when, where, why and how. The proof cases are impressive.

“The faster operators can bring LTE to market, the faster they can rise above the data storm to grow profitably and drive new revenues,” Palanivelu concluded. “Once they have the spectrum, there’s no reason to wait another day to invest in LTE and commercialize its vast potential.” He could have added with a 4G iPhone on the way, and tablet sales creating a tsunami of demand for quality user experiences on devices of all shapes and sizes, failure to deploy LTE and correctly architect not just the network but the business model could be hazardous to one’s competitive health.

A Holistic Approach is Necessary for Quality Customer Experiences

2012-04-09T17:45:37Z

By Mae Kowalke

For the hotly competitive world of mobile communications service providers, it’s no longer enough simply to provide fast, reliable connections for a variety of devices at competitive rates.

A recent article in the Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) e-zine Enriching Communications titled, “Taking Care of the Customer Experience,” co-authored by ALU’s Ben Geller, Senior Director of Marketing and Oliver Krahn, Customer Experience Transformation Growth Program Leader, on this subject is worth a read. They explain how, “Service providers are learning that they cannot differentiate with devices, services or pricing.” This is clearly a dramatic change from the past.

If the old practices are not the optimal path to success it leads to an interesting question, what really does differentiate a service provider anymore? As you probably have guessed from the title of this blog and the ALU article, the answer is providing an outstanding customer experience based on a holistic approach.

Geller and Krahn believe a large part of creating such experiences involved making things easy. This means easy in the customer’s eyes. They believe there are four main elements to viewing an experience through the eyes of a customer:

Services and devices are simple to start using right away
Network connectivity is always available when it’s needed
Devices and applications work the way they’re supposed to
Problems will be quickly identified and resolved

At the end of the day, service providers are both the creators of the customer experience as well as the enablers for others. This puts significant pressure on them to consistently provide a good quality of experience (QoE) regardless of the type of customer, or their location and to do so according to their expectations, needs and contractual relationships. What it means is the ability to manage these anywhere customers and to use analytics to gain insights into how to constantly improve the (QoE) and their value to the service provider as can be done with ALU's Motive Customer Experience Solutions portfolio. This includes careful attention to the speed and quality of response when problems occur which is a priority for retaining customer loyalty.

The good news is that providers have many assets that support an outstanding customer experience. It’s just a matter of appropriately leveraging those assets.

As Geller and Krahn note, “They own robust, secure and scalable networks that can support an array of services…They have access to innovative devices with open platforms that support application innovation. In short, they have all the components required to deliver a market-leading customer experience.” Indeed, these tools include such things as the ability to optimize bandwidth without sacrificing performance through such capabilities as mobile smartloading, and giving third-parties and internal developers the ability to use open APIs to create new revenue-generating applications and services

The last item about open APIs is crucial for success going forward, especially when combined with the insights gained from leveraging the information generated by customer services management tools. As the authors explain, creative partnerships are important and making sure everybody in the ecosystem is in a position to ensure the end customer has a compelling experience is key. “Service providers with robust infrastructures, networks, billing systems and help desks can essentially become service providers to application and content providers (ACPs),” Geller and Krahn point out. “Collaboration with ACPs can drive innovation in the application space, generate new revenue and influence the customer experience.”

They also explain that part of making things easy for customers means recognizing there is no one-size-fits-all approach or procedure for delivering an outstanding customer experience. New thinking, new strategies and new priorities, applied in customized ways, are critical. They emphasize that, “Every service provider plots its own path to transformation, often starting with a desire to address a specific pain point or opportunity…The right starting point and goals are essential.”

Some strategies service providers are using for managing the customer experience include:

Multi-channel customer care: to ensure the same quality of information and experience across all channels (phone, web, e-mail, IM, etc.).
Analytics: to measure how likely customers are to recommend service to others.
Maximizing network capacity yield: shifting usage patterns and rewarding customers for using the network during off-peak periods.

As with so many aspects of accommodating the dynamics of a changing world where the pace of everything is speeding up, and challenges can arise from almost anywhere at any time, Geller and Krahn present a powerful case as to why a holistic approach to the creation, substance and growth of quality customer experiences rest on service providers knocking down their operationally silos and embracing a holistic approach that is QoE-centric.

It is difficult to argue with their conclusion that, “To compete in the long term, executives must find ways to align departments and ensure that every person in the service provider organization is focused on delivering the best possible customer experience.” What this means is according to them is, “Extending consistency, universality and intuitiveness across every customer contact channel including call centers, web portals, IVRs and retail stores.”

Finally, it should be noted that this idea of a holistic approach must be viewed in the context of understanding that creating an end-user (the front end of the value-chain) quality customer experience can be considered the output of creating quality customer experiences for the back-end as well. Holism means making business processes and practices, and the people who use them more efficient and effective by empowering them with information from across the enterprise. This is not theory. It is best practice.

Alcatel-Lucent's Optism Solution Scoring Big Wins for Operators and Brands through Targeted, Permission-Based Mobile Advertising

2012-03-02T14:59:10Z

By Beecher Tuttle

The most successful advertisers and brands are always those that evolve alongside technology and adapt their campaigns based on recent consumer trends. Just as advertisers once changed their focus from print to digital platforms, marketing groups are now concentrating their efforts on the mobile market.

The inherent difficulty in mobile marketing is that it has almost become synonymous with spamming, where advertisers blanket mobile phone users with promotions, deals and company news that they simple don't care about. If only advertisers could partner with mobile operators and develop a base of consumers who are interested in connecting and interacting with their brand.

With the Optism Mobile Advertising Solution from Alcatel-Lucent, they can.

Optism provides an innovative business model that enables operators and their brand partners to engage with interested consumers through a permission-based system where users "opt-in" to receive ads and promotions. This way, advertisers can engage directly with users who love their products and services via SMS and MMS messages, thus creating value for brands, agencies, consumers and mobile network operators.

While somewhat new on the scene, Optism has already contributed to several wins, particularly in the developing world where mobile phone usage far exceeds PC ownership.

Egyptian operator Mobinil recently undertook an Optism campaign and garnered response rates as high as 54 percent. The company's "Mobile Ads" service was so successful it ended up winning the "Best Value-Added Services" at the Telecoms World event in Dubai last October.

"Since the introduction of our mobile advertising service, we have been able to further increase our relevance to end-users, brands and advertising agencies," said Ahmed Saber, Head of Mobile Advertising at Mobinil. "Leveraging the Optism solution, we are in a unique position to provide brands and advertising agencies access to — and a better understanding of — their potential customer base."

Ghana's Tigo has also found success with Optism, booking response rates of as high as 45 percent. In one campaign with Universal Motors, a total 30 percent of users responded to a Volkswagen Touareg ad, 90 percent of whom asked for more information on the vehicle.

Auto Parts Ltd, a distributor of Nissan automobiles in Ghana, mirrored the success of Universal Motors. "The mobile campaign we ran with Tigo Ads brought us to a wider audience than any other form of digital advertising in Ghana," said Haadi Bawah, marketing manager at Auto Parts. "The response rates to the Nissan Patrol campaign were extremely positive, and we gained insight into consumers’ needs that we can use to shape future campaigns."

In addition to its work with mobile operators and brands, Alcatel-Lucent has been spearheading a mobile advertising initiative dubbed the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), whose goal is to raise awareness around permission-based mobile marketing. The MMA is made up of a number of mobile service providers – including Vodafone Group, Telefonica, 02, Turkcell and Maxis – which are pushing this new initiative.

Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy: 6 Tips for Success

2012-02-27T15:14:50Z

By Susan J. Campbell

As consumers, we are constantly on the go with a mobile device of some kind in our hand providing directions, connection with a colleague or access to the data we need to close the big deal. The same device guides our social lives as we’ve come to rely on smart devices to manage our activities, content and connections. For brands, this provides the perfect opportunity to develop an Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy.

A recent blog by Mihai Vlad of Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism unit entitled, Thinking Human: Six Steps for Building a Successful Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy, highlights the opportunity that exists with the proliferation of the mobile phone as the must-have device. By developing an Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy, mobile operators, marketers and their brands can ask permission before engaging with consumers. In doing so, it provides unprecedented access to the consumer’s attention and the opportunity to build trust.

Simply implementing an Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy is not the guaranteed road to success, however. Companies must have a clear plan in place that gains attention, builds trust and drives engagement. Here, we’ll take a look at what Optism believes are six important steps for building the right Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy.

Be Transparent – if you aren’t clear on what you expect from the consumer and what you will provide if they opt-in, they will likely click right through to the next offering. Be upfront and honest and don’t forget to be clear that they can opt out at any time. Once you have their attention, focus on what they like – ask questions and do something with the answers.

Leave the Bribes to the Politicians – remember that an incentive is not the same thing as a bribe. It’s OK to offer value to opt-in, but that value needs to be delivered on a consistent basis. Provide information on great deals, offer coupons and notice of special events. If you offer a great prize or content entry for joining, your opt-out numbers will soar. Go for long-term value and search out those consumers that are truly interested in your service or product.

Leave the Jargon to the Lawyers – if I can’t understand your offer in the first few words, you’ve already wasted my time. Use clear language in your Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy by using the same approach you would when talking with friends. Avoid the use of marketing speak and clever turns of a phrase – mobile users want quick and to the point or they’re on to the next thing.

K.I.S.S. – you know you’re supposed to keep it simple stupid, but you forgot in the quest for impressing your audience. You don’t need to collect everything you need in one exchange – consumers will push back if you try. Think of your Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy like dating – you can’t propose marriage on the first date if you hope for date number two.

Are you Ready for This – even with the best intentions integrated into your strategy, consumers will still surprise you by acting outside of your expectations. Be ready for anything, even if your focus groups portray a particular picture. The ability to make changes quickly when things don’t go according to plan will set you apart from your competitors and put you in a better place strategically for gaining insight and increasing your ROI.

Keep it Local – remember that permission-based mobile marketing is about reaching out to an individual and engaging at a personal level. No universal rules exist that apply to all people in all cultures all the time. Learn local customs, preferences and habits if you hope to make a direct connection with that consumer.

You truly only have a limited amount of time to successfully engage the consumer in your Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy, so you have to get it right the first time. What the six tips show is that being honest, open, straightforward and consistent is the way to engage customers. In the online world the phrase, “you do not get a second chance to make a first impression,” is critical to understand when designing and launching a new service. That said, following the six tips should put you well on your way to success.

New Revenue Opportunities Possible with the New Conversation Experience

2012-01-03T17:15:24Z

By Susan Campbell

Service provider (SP) revenues are taking significant revenue hits from application and content providers (ACPs) as the disaggregation of content from physical access shifts value generation opportunities toward third parties. At the same time SPs are also attempting to ward off “free” offerings, such as people using things like Skype for making phone calls who are willing to put up with inferior quality, by attracting people to superior services they will pay a premium for. The challenge, which every day gains more urgency, is how to react to both trends.

The objective is to be relevant and central in evolving ecosystems and thereby be in a position to maximize new opportunities while minimizing risks. The vehicle for turning things around is embodied in the desirability of creating a new conversation experience with customers based on a holistic strategic approach.

A recent Alcatel-Lucent article, The Value of the New Conversation Experience highlighted the need for service providers to increase the average revenue per user and reduce churn, two of the major revenue corrosive issues. It focused on the reality that to accomplish these goals, SPs must quickly bring to market enhanced service bundles and also rapidly introduce innovative service offerings with compelling and differentiated perceivable value as critical to combating free services.

According to research and business models provided by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), establishing a new conversation experience offers SPs the means to create sustained business value. It cautions that the value has to be communicated correctly to users and made attractive to all members of evolving ecosystems as well.

ALU’ research reveals that service providers willing to leverage things like IMS technology can capture and keep the attention of their customers through by enabling a more intimate relationship that is experienced as being personal, seamless, secure and social. However, a rich communication suite is not enough.

The research found that users want something with the attributes of ALU’s new conversation experience if they are to remain loyal which in turn can provide service providers with a broad and long term business value.

To truly deliver this new conversation experience, it’s critical that service providers understand what is required. For instance, the article says that customers want such things as:

Delivery of enriched voice to enable VoIP through a presence- and chat-ready enhanced network address book
One number service for all calling
HD quality IP-based video calling and sharing services through the availability of an enhanced network address book
Intuitive messaging for a converged messaging
Single inbox service between SMS, IM, MMS, video mail and voice mail

The key to all of the above and many more is that each of these services can deliver only short-term business value when delivered alone. Worse, they can be easily commoditized. When the services are bundled together, however, they are the foundation for the delivery of the new conversation experience.

To position service providers to generate new and sustainable revenue streams, ALU contends that the focus needs to be on creating integrated communications solutions, combining services and delivering enhanced bundles. This may include a Multimedia Pack to extend enriched voice, intuitive messaging and live video and access to enhanced bundles to deliver on the new conversation experience.

The key for the service provider is to develop the right offering and the right strategy for taking the offering to market. They must then employ sophisticated business modeling techniques so they can react quickly to maximize opportunity and minimize risks in a rapidly changing world.

ALU contends that the new conversation experience is the best way for service providers to create long-term differentiated and sustainable value and that now is the time to start the conversation before as they say, “the window of opportunity is closes.”

As with so many aspects of modern life, the Internet has profoundly changed the nature of relationships between buyers and sellers. Choice and not dictates are the rule and not the exception, and the customers because of access to information and alternatives now have historically unprecedented leverage. They are willing to talk but under new terms and conditions which are going to require new approaches to engagement both short and long term. It is as stated, a new conversation experience. It certainly appears to be a conversation worth getting started.

Permission-Based Mobile Marketing Strategies Hold Value for Advertisers, Operators and Consumers

2012-01-03T00:05:25Z

By Beecher Tuttle

The influx of smartphones, tablets and next-generation networks has created a number of new ways for brands and marketing agencies to reach consumers. Unfortunately, many of today's mobile marketing techniques fail to engage consumers, who often find the advertisements to be bothersome, intrusive and unrelated to their interests.

One innovative and effective way to bridge this gap is a strategy called permission-based mobile marketing, a targeted advertising technique that changes the marketing paradigm by creating a dialogue with consumers, rather than an invasive, one-sided monologue.

The basic premise of permission-based mobile marketing is rather simple: users opt-in and give their consent for brands to send them targeted, preference-based marketing materials for products and services that they are interested in. If executed properly, a permission-based mobile marketing strategy can create value for brands, agencies, consumers and mobile network operators.

A recent white paper, Building Permission Based Mobile Marketing, authored by the Mobile Marketing Association and its Task Force members, including Alcatel-Lucent, Vodafone and other major players in the telecom space, details permission-based mobile marketing, how it works and the benefits that it can bring to all parties involved.

The strength of the marketing technique relies on the fact that mobile devices are now near-ubiquitous. In addition, the mobile platform is currently made up of multiple, flexible channels including messaging, browsing, apps and proximity channels. Needless to say, the mobile platform offers advertisers an expansive field to play with.

Taking advantage of mobile channels is easier said than done, however, because consumers get turned off when they receive marketing materials from brands that they don't care about. This is where permission-based mobile marketing can succeed.

Targeted advertising dramatically increases response rates and creates an engaged audience, says MMA, and also gives consumers reason to share their demographic information and other data that can help encourage commerce.

Consumers have plenty of reasons to opt-in to marketing campaigns, including a more personalized and deeper connection to the brands that they love, a two-way dialogue in the format of their choosing and, most importantly, access to special deals, alerts and discounts.

In fact, a recent Alcatel-Lucent survey found that 63 percent of mobile youth indicated that they would be more willing to purchase products or services from preferred brands using a permission-based mobile marketing service. More than three-quarters of respondents said that it's important for mobile ads to be based on their interests, while more than 80 percent said it's "very/extremely" important for brands to ask permission before sending them advertisements.

In addition to benefiting consumers, permission-based mobile marketing provides a number of opportunities for brands and agencies, the most obvious of which is a significant reduction in advertising spending that is wasted on consumers who have no interest in their products and services. The strategy also increases consumer engagement and real-time interaction, which, in turn, boosts ROI numbers.

Additional benefits include quick response rates – with 90 percent of SMS text messages read within three minutes of receipt – and the ability to create long-term relationships.

Finally, permission-based mobile marketing can be a major aid to network service providers, who can leverage the strategy to improve customer satisfaction numbers and open up new revenue streams by partnering with advertisers and content creators.

MMA Task Force member Alcatel-Lucent is one of the leading supporters of permission-based mobile marketing, and has designed its Optimism solution to help provide the aforementioned benefits to all parties in the commerce value chain. The Optimism Mobile Advertising Solution, which helps advertisers and operators connect with a 100 percent opted-in audience, has proven to be extremely effective in multiple global campaigns.

As an example, Egyptian mobile network operator Mobinil has seen their response rates on mobile ad services climb to as high as 54 percent on the back of the Optimism solution.

"Since the introduction of our mobile advertising service, we have been able to further increase our relevance to end-users, brands and advertising agencies. Leveraging the Optism solution, we are in a unique position to provide brands and advertising agencies access to — and a better understanding of — their potential customer base," Ahmed Saber, Head of Mobile Advertising at Mobinil, noted in a recent case study.

Alcatel-Lucent will continue to work with the MMA to push permission-based marketing to the next level and enable advertisers and operators to make the most efficient use of their budgets.

“We’re very excited that the MMA recognizes the importance of permission-based marketing and that Alcatel-Lucent has the opportunity to help shape the efforts of the taskforce as we evangelize and educate the industry on best practices,” said Lisa Ciangiulli, Director of Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Commerce Solutions.

Check out the complete white paper to read Alcatel-Lucent's four-stage process for launching a permission-based mobile marketing campaign and some recent success stories.